Re: static lib with libtool 1.5

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hi Jeremie,

* Jeremie LE HEN wrote on Wed, Jun 29, 2005 at 11:20:18AM CEST:
> 
> Ok, I didn't know that too :-).  I've had a look through the
> documentation, it would be worth to give an example of the use of
> this mode, IMHO.

Your documentation points are valid, thanks.  We should work on that.

> I think I got my problem resolved by using the lastest version of
> libtool (1.5.18) : with exactly the same command sequence, I get
> a static library with libtool-1.5.18 in the .libs/ directory, while
> libtool-1.5.6 doesn't produce it.  Is it a known behaviour ?  Are there
> any workaround to this, except upgrading my libtool version (we have
> our own Debian distribution at work, and upgrading a package in it is,
> unfortunately, a heavy process, especially when the package is still
> not released by the Debian maintainer) ?  If there isn't, I would send
> a notice to the Debian maintainer to let him know about this bug.

Well, AFAIK the Debian Libtool packages are orphaned at the moment, due
to Scott not working on them any more.  This is very unfortunate, I hope
this changes soon.

Fortunately, your problem is not related to 1.5.6 vs 1.5.18 at all (at
least not a lot).  If you had configured and compiled 1.5.6 yourself
with "cc" as C compiler, it would have worked fine.  Or used "gcc"
instead of "cc" as compiler name.  Or -- and this is the real solution
to your problem -- add "--tag=CC" to your command line.  I actually
forgot to mention this the first time around:

  libtool --tag=CC --mode=link cc -o ...

There are a couple of limitations in Libtool, when used the way you do:
It will only work with the compiler and linker it was configured with.
(For example, it will do the wrong thing when used with icc; since "cc"
in your case is the same as gcc, strictly speaking this is a libtool
bug, as it matches the given name only, which it should not; however, I
don't know an easy portable way out of this limitation).
The other point I just noted is that 1.5.18 will bomb out in some cases
(when given an "unknown" compiler name) where Debian-1.5.6 won't.. let's
see.

Regards,
Ralf